Masquerade
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: Somewhere far away, there is a girl in a tower under a terrible curse. Ah, but this is only the beginning! Fantasy AU.
1. The Girl in the Tower

Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Setsu-Getsu-Ka" composed by sista and Bumpy Urushi, sung by Yuzuki Yukari.

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The Girl in the Tower

In a land far, far away, there is a tower. At the top of the tower is a big round room with a high round ceiling and wide round windows high on the walls. The room is all in a thousand shades of purple, from the curving walls the color of blooming orchids to a round bed like a fat squashed eggplant, from the thick carpet in a nearly black violet to tiny lacy pillows in the palest lilac. The only exceptions are the thick black curtains covering all but one of the windows, and a froth of multicolored herbs and flowers and even a little plot of tomatoes in the wide balcony outside the room.

From the single uncovered window, a ray of light slices through the claret shadows to settle on a heather-patterned writing desk strewn with books and papers in a half-dozen languages. Looking over the papers, sitting ramrod-straight even now in her room with no one else to see, is a thin pale slip of a girl in a fine silk dress dyed Tyrian purple.

There are two heavy wooden doors, painted just as purple, and they are unlocked only twice a month: Once, on the first night of the waxing crescent, when the girl is permitted to explore her gardens, and perhaps to pluck a single flower. Once, on the day after the full moon, when her mother comes to see that her daughter is, yes, still alive, and yes, she is still in the tower. It is for her mother's visit that her daughter has abandoned her usual flat blacks and deep grays, her simple dresses woven from linen or cotton or wool and her big black stomping-boots, for a delicate confection in royal colors in the hopes that perhaps her mother will think her less of a disgrace and let her see the world outside.

Sighing, the girl sits back and listens to the familiar shuffle of her maid puttering around the room.

"Mistress, you mustn't slouch like that," the woman chides. "You'll wrinkle the fabric. Think of everyone who worked to make that dress."

"Yes, and the thousands of silkworms that died for it," the girl sneered.

"Oh, well, silkworms. Now that's just horrible," the maid answers; their exchange as familiar as the monthly ritual of Visiting.

Unable to resist, the girl rolls her eyes and rises from the frail-looking wooden chair. "If I didn't know better, Nanny, I'd swear you had eyes in the back of your head."

"Gracious! Don't say such things," the woman yelps and clutches at her head, graying copper curls fighting their way out from under her cap.

The girl smiles and shoots back a well-used taunt about old wives' tales. If the woman had been less genuinely frightened, she might have noticed the girl's fists clenching, tendons standing out stark against the insides of her wrists.

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At precisely twelve o'clock noon, a familiar chime resounds through the room, the echoes swallowed by the many layers of cloth covering every hard surface. The maid quickly and efficiently tucks the last of the folded shirts into a drawer and shuts it, just as quickly and efficiently bustling over to the inner door where she will wait for her mistress. The girl slowly and sedately puts her writing set away, looking for all the world as though it were an unexpected interruption, and just as slowly and sedately glides to the inner door, arriving just a pace behind her maid.

As she does every month, the maid reaches into a small bag hanging by the door and, with trembling fingers, pulls out a tiny golden key that she slides into a tiny keyhole dwarfed by the massive lock. Ah, but everyone knows that for a very large lock, you would need a suitably large key, no?

Well, no, because this lock was magical, just like the outer edge of the balcony gardens was enchanted to let air and water and light flow and keep all else in, and just like the ninety-and-nine other complicated mechanisms that let a girl and her maid live their whole lives in one room.

As the maid turned the key and felt the tumblers fall, she breathed a sigh of relief. The door slid outwards, revealing the Visitor they had been expecting. She was a vision in pink, subtle curves and soft ripples to her daughter's flat planes and sharp points. Her dress was a bright pink hoop-skirted thing that could hardly fit through the doorway, and her immaculate white shoes, gloves and hair ornaments shone in the semidarkness of the girl's room.

The maid shivered slightly, unable to help herself. This was always the most dangerous part, these first few moments when mother and daughter met and spoke for the first time in a month.

The younger woman frowned slightly at the gloom, snapping her fingers at the curtains and flooding the room with sunset light. Carefully placed mirrors meant to catch moonlight shattered the sunbeams, turning the many purples into a nightmarish riot of bruise- and blood-colored surfaces shifting at the slightest breath, almost as though one were trapped inside a massive misshapen creature.

The girl smirked as the first point of the day went to her. _"Brighten the place up", my foot_, she thought.

The woman's frown deepened, and then she turned to the girl and smiled sweetly. "Samantha, sweetie, let me look at you," she cooed.

Obediently, the girl stood absolutely still, save for unavoidable necessities such as blinking and breathing and the tiny muscle twitches as she swayed on pointed heels. Years of deportment training might have taught her to walk in them, but it would take a far greater force than courtesy to make her loathe high-heeled shoes any less.

The woman walked a cycle around the girl, clucking her tongue at the faint but unmistakable lines of muscle visible where the fabric of her dress clung and showed skin. "Samantha, dear, why do you never gain an ounce?"

Sam bit her tongue. _I don't know, Mother. Maybe it's because I haven't been outside since before I can remember?_

"I'm so jealous," she continued. "I can't have so much as a cucumber sandwich without it going straight to my thighs. Lucky girl." Here she tapped the girl on the chest with one gloved finger and a very disapproving glance. "Now if only you weren't flat as a plank, I wouldn't have to worry so about your looks." _Or lack of them_, went very pointedly unsaid.

Sam allowed herself a mental eye roll and a silent scoff while her mother looked away from her usual inspection. _What about my looks? You and I both know I'll never leave the tower,_ she thought spitefully.

Seemingly oblivious to her daughter's thoughts, the woman stopped circling and gracefully settled onto a chair the maid had prepared. She gestured at the chair on the other side of the tea service, an expanse of gleaming silver piled high with sweets and finger sandwiches. Sam sat at the edge of her own, slightly smaller chair, back straight and eyes not leaving her mother's for a second.

The mother attempted to compliment the food, which the daughter pointed out was from the house kitchens and no different from the usual tea service at the house, save for the smaller quantities. The woman lowered her face for a moment, eyes unreadable behind a pale pink mask trimmed with gold and seed pearls and framed by flame-red hair in an intricate updo.

They finished the meal in silence, pausing only for the maid to refill their cups or add cream and sugar to the mother's tea.

Tea ended, and the mother rose to look at her daughter's room. With the ghastly lighting dealt with, it was a pretty enough place, all soft hangings and delicate embroidery over carved wood. She had wanted the room to be pink, and it had been until her daughter had taught herself to turn all the white to black and all the pink to purple seemingly overnight. She had been only eight years old, far younger than most children performed their first work of magic. Perhaps that was the world's way of compensating for her curse.

Suppressing a sigh, she took one last look at her daughter, as angry and disdainful as ever. Her mother-in-law had reported that the palace servants were in fact quite fond of her, despite the precautions needed to speak to her, and that she had struck up a friendship with one old gardener, happily debating the merits of ladybugs and gardening tools through the outer door.

Whatever she was like to others, ever since the girl's seventh birthday she had never once seen her daughter remotely happy. As she prepared to leave, the girl approached her and asked for what felt like the thousandth time, "Mother, may I please leave the tower?"

Now the lady of the house was a proud woman, and self-assured in her absolute rightness, but she was not heartless. It was for this very reason that she could not let her daughter leave the tower, not yet. _Even if her fate is beyond saving, let Samantha's soul remain unstained._

And so, for the eighty-third time, Pamela told her daughter that she could not leave her cage. Not in so many words, of course, but that is what was meant and that is what was heard. As the maid escorted the lady of the tower down the winding spiral staircase, they heard the clatter and crash of objects flying and flowers bursting from their tidy pots.

The maid plodded back up the stairs and let herself in with the little golden key to find the room as neat and tidy as ever. The girl had gone back to her calligraphy, a few thickened lines of ink the only remaining indication of her upset.

Staring up at the balcony from his little shed just past the gatehouse, the old gardener wondered how in the world he was going to get the tower gardens back in order before the girl's fourteenth birthday.

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A/N: The first chapter of another story, in a rather different style than my usual. Hope you enjoy it. Please read and review.


	2. The Origin of the Curse

Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Setsu-Getsu-Ka" composed by sista and Bumpy Urushi, sung by Yuzuki Yukari.

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The Origin of the Curse

The castle with its lonely tower sat at the top of a hill, and beneath that hill was a busy town by the name of Amity Park. It wasn't the biggest town, or the richest, but for the most part its inhabitants agreed it was a nice place to live. Well, at least as long as farmers remembered to put milk out every night and merchants kept an eye out for coin that crumbled to dirt and leaves, and craftsmen were very, very polite to strange visitors that wore exotic silks and did not give their names. You see, Amity Park was in one of those odd places where reality was worn rather thin, like a bolt of expensive fabric worn too long and hard. This meant that all manner of strange things found their way to this little town, and that those who first settled this little valley had a choice to make.

Its founders might have chosen to drive out all these strange things, but that would have driven out the flighty spirits of breeze and brook, and the timid keepers of the forest and field, and then where would they be? It would have killed the land and strangled the town before it was anything more than a hamlet. No, that was no choice at all.

Perhaps, they could have given in and let the spirits have their way. But then what would happen to their grand vision of a prosperous trade-town, a center of power unlike any other in this age? Unacceptable!

No, they took the middle route, and some say that this was the maddest idea of them all. The first Duke of Amity, a quiet and unassuming man whose father had been a merchant himself until the king had granted him a title (for reasons that shall remain undisclosed), took his books and a hired magic-worker into the forest, and came out with a signed and sealed writ of armistice. There had long been an unspoken agreement between the humans and the spirits of the land that could be boiled down to "Leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone." In this case, "us" meant the spirits and "you" meant the humans. The first Duke of Amity was simply the first to make it official in such a human way – he wrote it down, and in so doing guaranteed that the agreement could be renewed beyond his death so long as each successive lord took care to sign the writ upon being instated.

Each successive Duke did indeed take great care to read and sign the writ upon being instated. As a result, after only three generations Amity Park had become the largest and richest town in an otherwise unremarkable duchy on the western edge of the empire.

And why, you ask, was the first Duke so insistent on building his town in this exact place? You are listening, aren't you? Reality was thin in that valley, so thin that creatures of magic could walk in broad daylight without a second thought, and the flow of magic in the air itself was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The first Duke knew exactly what he was doing, money-wise. There was always profit to be made in such an untapped well.

The problem was, he hadn't the first clue what he was doing magic-wise. Oh, he brokered his deals with the spirits of the land, and he negotiated well enough to ensure the prosperity and relative safety of its people for the span of his years and then some. He just forgot to take into account that spirits take a very unpleasant view of those who attempt to cheat them, and that most people weren't all that honest in most dealings. On top of that, he never realized that people who live their whole lives practically swimming in magic are a lot more likely to be able to use magic themselves. And of course, he forgot that humans with magic are just as prone to human error as anyone else.

One of the stipulations of the writ was that all the important spirits around Amity Park get an invitation to the naming ceremonies of the Duke's children. There's no need on their end to show, and few do, but they have to be invited. Now just a few years ago, when the current Duke's wife was writing the list of invitations to her unborn child's naming ceremony, she didn't bother to double-check if she'd missed one.

You can guess where this is going, can't you? Some big-shot spirit didn't get invited, got offended, and cursed the baby. Then, the parents cursed themselves for being idiots.

The Duke then asked the nearest magic user, an old sorcerer (and old business partner of the Duke's), to explain what it meant. The sorcerer being of the less scrupulous variety of magic user, he saw a chance to profit from the Duchess' folly, and twisted his interpretation of the curse to the worst possible light.

The original curse had been the old classic "Girl Dies on Her Sixteenth Birthday", usually of a spindle or a spinning wheel, but this one was a bit different.

This was the original curse, which by the way doesn't even keep to a strict rhyme scheme:

"By the first night of her sixteenth year,  
The girl will look upon the face of man  
And know the mask of death ere moon's end."

Here's what the old creep said it meant:

"The girl will see a man's face when she turns sixteen, and she will die within a month."

By then, nearly all of the guests had given their naming gifts. However, not everyone at the ceremony had been invited. After all, who would have expected the Master of Time to attend a mortal child's naming ceremony of all things? Now, this particular big-shot couldn't interfere directly, but that didn't mean he couldn't drop a few pointed comments in the general direction of one particular spirit that just came for the free food and brought the kid a moving picture book, and should have just given her parents the book right after her name was given instead of raiding the buffet first. Anyways, said poor sucker was "asked" to find a loophole in the curse. Not wanting to tick off one of the greater powers, said poor sucker hopped to.

Being on the spot, the first thing that came to mind was to flip it around, so he walked up to the parents and the baby in her little bassinet and said, "Wait, wait! I haven't given my gift yet, and I'm pretty good at incantations. Let me try and fix it!"

Then he started talking, and before he had a chance to talk himself out of it, this came out:

"By the night of her sixteenth year  
Under silver moonlight clear  
In her gaze, a death is made  
By her will, a fate is stayed  
Either way, her end's not here."

And then he realized he'd just come up with a limerick of all things, and high-tailed it out of there before he could embarrass herself any worse. Wound up sending the kid the picture book for her first birthday, and she definitely got it, because it never popped back up in my library.

Now she's getting to the age where she's going to notice boys, and if she's anything like as stubborn as I've heard, being locked up in a tower isn't going to stop her from meeting them. I just know this is going to end badly, but I just can't help but want to know what happens next.

So, that was the story of how the duchy got there, and how its capital got there, and how the Duke's only child was cursed.

Now, what have we here? It seems that the gardener, prickly old grouch that he is, is hiring help in preparation for the little duchess' fourteenth birthday.

Yes, because there's no way that could go wrong.

(Did I really just write that? …Oops. Note to self: Never let the Duchess, either duchess for that matter, see this manuscript. Ever.)

At any rate, the Duke's gardener is in the town square searching for a strong young man willing to work long hours. Failing that, he will take anyone capable of using a pair of garden shears without losing a hand. Conveniently enough, there is a boy in need of work.

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A/N: I may have to go back and edit this later. And stop trying to write sleep-deprived. Read and review, please.


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